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Fulton, N.Y. - Birds Eye Foods has been an important part of the Niver family for more than 20 years.

Kevin Niver’s mother worked at the Fulton plant in the quality assurance department for years. He joined the plant 25 years ago as a sanitation worker, and now helps maintain the refrigeration units.

On Friday, Niver, learned he will be the last person in his family to work at the plant.

Pinnacle Foods, the New Jersey-based owner of the plant, announced it will close its Fulton location at the end of the year. About 280 workers will lose their jobs.

The company will move the work to Darien, Wis. and Waseca, Minn., to lower shipping costs and to be closer to crops it processes, company officials said. Pinnacle stopped using crops from New York in 2007, they said.

Employees learned about the closing Friday morning at a meeting at the Fulton War Memorial. Afterwards, most people walked quietly to their cars. One man yelled “It’s over.” Another man gave thumbs down.

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” said David Dellanno , a compressor room operator who has worked at the plant for 12 years. “It’s sad but it’s a decent place to work. It’s the trend in America.”

Timeline

1902: Plant opens in Fulton as the Fort Stanwix Canning Co.
1938: Plant begins packaging Birds Eye vegetables
1943: Kraft buys plant, makes improvements over the years
1993: Kraft General Foods agrees to sell its Birds Eye vegtable and fruit lines to Dean Foods Co. of Franklin Park, Ill., for $140 million
1998: Agrilink buys the plant
2009: Birds Eye, including the food plant in Fulton, sold to Pinnacle Foods, a private equity company of the Blackstone Group, for $1.3 billion
Compiled by Post-Standard research librarian Bonnie Ross

The closing of the Birds Eye plant, which processes Birds Eye Vegetables and Birds Eye Voila! , is the third major factory closing in the Fulton area since Miller Brewery closed its doors in September 1994.

The Miller had nearly 1,000 workers, some who held some of the highest-paying jobs in Central New York at the time. That was followed in 2003 by the closing of Nestle USA, the oldest chocolate factory in the United States. At it’s height, the Fulton plant employed more than 1,500 people; it had about 400 when it closed.

Fulton Mayor Ronald Woodward , who was a maintenance manager at Nestle, said the Birds Eye closing could have a similar impact on the city as Nestle did in 2003.

“It’s devastating to the community,” he said. “I went through it myself at Nestle in 2003 and my heart goes out to all the employees and their families.”

The Birds Eye plant opened in 1902 as the Fort Stanwix Canning Co. It went through a number of owners in the last 107 years, including Kraft General Foods, Dean Foods, Agrilink and now, Birds Eye.

Birds Eye employees like Amy LaBeef , a warehouse forklift driver, are unsure of where they will now find work.

“I feel bad for everyone who’s been there a long time,” said LaBeef, who’s worked at the plant for three years. “There’s nothing left in Fulton. Nestle’s is gone. Now this.”

For others, the closing seemed inevitable after the plant was purchased by Pinnacle in 2009.

“I think the writing has been on the wall for a couple of years now,” Niver said. “I don’t think it comes as any great surprise to the vast majority of people.”

About 250 workers at the plant are members of the Workers United Local 1822 union, whose contract expires in 2013. The company will honor the contract through the end of the year and is in the process of putting together a severance package, said Eduardo Jofre , a business representative with the union.

The average worker at the plant makes between $12.90 - $24.57 an hour, Jofre said.

Oswego County’s unemployment rate was 12 percent in February. The New York rate is 8.7 percent. The national unemployment rate is 9.5 percent.

Because of the high jobless rate and the lack of high paying jobs, it will be difficult for employees to find work in Fulton, said Lawrence Spizman , a professor of economics at the State University College at Oswego.

“Those people that are the most skilled, and perhaps the most educated at least in their area, will have some mobility if they want to leave the area,” Spizman said.

“Those people that are not able to leave the are for multiple reasons — family close by — they’re going to be here. And there are no jobs paying $24 an hour, locally, and not many paying $12 an hour,” he said. “I think the chances of them getting jobs are going to be not very good, unfortunately.”

The closing will also affect more than just the laid off workers, Spizman said.

“Now all those workers that had pretty descent paychecks, in terms of hourly wages and benefits, won’t be spending money locally,” he said. “They won’t have it to spend. So they won’t be buying cars or any of the products sold locally in the Fulton area.”

According to the plants most recent property tax assessment, Birds Eye paid about $388,800 in taxes to schools and local governments, said Michael Treadwell, executive director of Operation Oswego County and the county Industrial Development Agency. The plant paid $88,179 in school taxes this year, which is less than a half a percent of the entire tax levy for the district.

“It’s unfortunate” said school Superintendent William Lynch. “It’s the trickle down. It’s 300 families and of course, they all might not live here. But look at the impact that has across small businesses in the city.”

Another hit will be money to run the Fulton sewage treatment plant. Birds Eye pays about 25 percent, $558,000, of the cost of running the plant.

Pinnacle is willing to sell the plant but could not comment on whether the equipment would be included, said Elizabeth Rowland, a Pinnacle representative.

For now, work at the plant will resume on Monday.

Niver, 54, will be there.

“I had 29 good years here and this place has been pretty good to me,” he said. “I understand where they’re coming from, as far as the company goes. I understand that’s the part of doing business.”